Wilderness 2019

Creative Document
WILDERNESS
CREATIVE DOCUMENT

Creative Vision
● Wilderness is many stories.
○ There are the stories of the six teenagers who are working through the pain and
trauma of their past, tussling with their inner demons as they try to survive an
atypical adolescence.
○ There are the stories of the parents, their side of the story, about their own
struggles trying to find a common ground with their children.
○ Then, there is the story of the mother, or ‘Mom’, who is navigating the bridge
between her and her son, while trying to make sense of the cards she’s been
dealt with.
● Wilderness is complicated in presentation but at its core, is a story about 3 things:
○ Survival
■ These stories are not about people who are reaching for the heavens and
lending among the stars. These are stories about families who are
barely holding it together - dealing with issues of depression,
anxiety, self-harm, anger, sexuality.
■ They are in the eye of the hurricane that is teenagehood
■ Ultimately then, for these people, it is about surviving - about getting
through one day, one hour, one minute so that they can get on to the
next because the unimaginable burden they carry with them drags
them down.
■ We need to ensure that these stories are not run-of-the-mill teenage
angst that any teen experiences, but is in one way or another, atypical -
that they are carrying intense trauma from their past which landed them in
these circumstances
■ But at the end of the day, they either survive or continue to fight for
their survival - that is the hope they offer us
○ Connection
■ The stories in Wilderness also echo the point that we are not alone in
our experiences. Often times, when the characters go into their
monologues, teen or Mom, they feel an immense sense of loneliness in
what they are experiencing.
■ In this loneliness, you see them either retreat into isolation, as some of
the characters do, or reach out as Mom does through her interviews with
the parents of the kids
■ For the parents, we see them reiterate the point that they seek to connect
with their children, to bridge the chasm that has emerged between them
■ For the teenagers and the facilitators, we see them trying to get through
to the other, to break through the walls they built, to get the teenagers to
be vulnerable.
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■ It is this connection that brings them out of the rut they were in
○ Healing
■ The arc to this story is one of healing. To slowly mend themselves from
the painful experiences they faced before.
■ Healing is a different journey for each character but they all face
setbacks and relapses - none of the healing arcs are perfect: Sophia
slipped back into the use of oxy, Cole refuses to contend with the
emptiness that is welling inside him and instead behaves recklessly etc.
■ Their healing process does not stop at the end of the play, it continues on
● Wilderness is not a script not a story that seeks to be pretty or beautiful. Rather it
demands a certain rawness and ugliness that comes from the darkness that the
characters go through. Whatever creative decision made should be done to serve the
truth of the stories because these stories are real stories and we owe it to them to tell
it as truthfully as we can.

Concept & Structure

● All the characters, be it parent or teacher or facilitator, go through their own version of
the wilderness. They are each working through their own set of traumas and
issues, grappling with their own demons, old and new.
● The structure of the script, as it is, is not very narrative-friendly - there is a lot of
abruptness and cut-to’s as well as monologues following snappy dialogue. A possibility
then is to lean into the chaos to aid us in our transitions and changes - it’s like we
are at the eye of the hurricane and everything is swirling, before the storm settles
a little in the end
● Visual Metaphor:
○ Darkness and Light
■ There are multiple references to the idea of light and darkness in the
script, especially in terms of stage directions. From the start of the script:
“Darkness / Then: Stars” (7) to “Sun starts to rise very slowly” (42), we
see that it is a common theme.
■ What if we placed these characters into a dark labyrinth or
wilderness? What would they do? What would they see?
■ What can be done then to illuminate this darkness?
■ The arc of Wilderness then can be seen as a way from dark to light,
albeit not wholly illuminated - that there is hope for each and every
person in this play
○ Demons
■ There are multiple ‘demons’ that the characters grapple with, from mental
disorders to toxic environments - and in the sense, we can try to make
these intangibles into something tangible through movement work or
costumes or set (pictures for reference)
■ These ‘demons’ are NOT literal depictions or a physical
manifestation of the issues they deal with. Rather, they are the
sensorial experiences these characters face when they see or
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Creative Document
remember certain things. Our job is to show the character’s emotional
responses to the trauma that plagues their everyday life.
● Example: Christopher Boone in the National Theatre production’s
of Curious Incident in which everything we see on stage is filtered
as to what Christopher sees - where sounds, lights etc are
exaggerated or accentuated in detail
■ In that labyrinth or that wilderness, they come face to face with these
demons, at every turn of the corner, their past traumas and pain hide in
plain sight, within their own psyche - a burden they have to carry with
them

● Music in Wilderness
○ Role and Significance of Music:
■ Music gives shape and depth to the emotions we perceive whether in
the words or actions we see on stage. It is a language of its own and
plays a potent role in deepening the emotions and articulating the
emotions in a way where words and blocking are unable to. The
music nuances the emotions for the audience, in fact perhaps making our
theatre more accessible.
■ We are using music to externalize the emotional associations which
our brain does within itself when it hears different things - no sensorial
experience is ever just that - it is linked to a multitude of different
emotions based on our histories and memory. Thus, when we use
music to play naturalistic sounds of Wilderness or the sound of a Skype
Call, we are not just hearing the sound - the audience will hear what it
sounds like to a specific character and what that person associates with
it.
■ In other words, a sound is never just a sound, it provokes or
associates new and old emotions/memories, our music represents the
emotions which these sounds evoke within the characters.
○ Music is an integral part of the production and staging. The music is in a
sense creates the space, that wilderness that the characters are in. The music is
raw, experimental and fluid. It is a reflection of the inner turmoil that the
characters go through - a reflection of that darkness that the characters inhibit.
○ Music gives shape and depth to the emotions of anything which we perceive
whether a sound or words or actions. Music is a language of its own, and thus
has a very potent role in deepening the emotions .
○ The musicians will be on stage - they are part of the set and they will move
around (i.e. there’s blocking)
○ For the full list of prospective music:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NcgFU5e8ypVktZsv6V0mjGGwy4tPapjk2j
1GneOS9T0/edit
○ RAW - we are using sounds that are very strained (eg extreme registers in the
strings and bassoon) and bring about a sense of unease, tension.
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Creative Document
○ We also want to capture the essence of honesty within the characters so the
aesthetic of the music will not be harmonious all the time, but will have
ambiguous tonal qualities, often dissonant and momentary consonants.
○ Music would also be the source of most, if not all, live wilderness sounds
● Setting and Time Period
○ The setting of Wilderness was originally Utah - we are not transposing it onto a
Singaporean context, especially since there is not much context for wilderness
therapy here
■ Setting: Set in original geography (but creative liberties can be taken
as to how we represent it)
■ Time Period: Present
Production Design
● Set
○ Something between a labyrinth and the wilderness - a space that is hard to
navigate and where each corner or space has the possibility of a ‘demon’ being
there, between modern and wild
○ Has multiple levels for the characters to play with - possible use of ramps
○ May integrate the use of multimedia in terms of projections onto the floor
○ May involve the use of things hanging from the rig + can think about how to
incorporate other sources of light into the stage
● Costumes
○ Camping clothes, think OBS but more intense.
○ May opt for more basic costumes for ensemble movement pieces
○ May look into more exaggerated forms of costuming/props to represent these
‘demons’
● Lights
○ Look at the possibility of lighting that is placed on the floor or the sides of the
stage - can coordinate with sets in terms of incorporating other light sources into
the set itself
○ May want to look at multimedia projections
● Sounds
○ Integrate the music that we have along with recordings of the parents, the 911
call
Message
● To show that the darkness and angst exists too for these teenagers, and these are
prevailing issues that often go unnoticed within our own society
● To showcase the parallel difficulty parents face in navigating through the adolescence of
their children
● To offer hope to those watching that the sun will always rise no matter how dark it gets

Things to note:
● RESEARCH: since this play deals with a lot of sensitive issues which we might not be
familiar to, we strongly encourage everyone to conduct research on the
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Creative Document
experiences of people who deal with mental health issues, trauma victims etc. to
get a clear picture of what happens - we owe it to people who actually experience
these issues to relay their experiences as authentically as possible
○ You may go to the following research folder and share your own research here
too: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1QJCkXlsZ_t1wiqVXPTIBBquo6wRGGEj0
● DO NOT STEREOTYPE: In line with the research that is required, let us not assume
things about conditions/circumstances we are unfamiliar with AND do not take our own
experience with these issues as universal
○ We should not generalize or trivialize these issues
○ Read the stories of the families holistically - piece the two sides of the parent and
child to get a more holistic reading of the situation - do not place value-
judgements on the characters because of how they appear to be
Wilderness 2019
Creative Document